It was a testing morning for the Men’s Aerial Qualification, with light swirling winds and snow making in-run speed and visibility challenging. VIS scholarship athlete Reilly Flanagan took it all in his stride landing two solid jumps on his Olympic debut.
The Australian men’s team is in the process of building strong talent for the future of the sport, with Flanagan targeting the French Alps Games and is in the process of building up his degree of difficulty for 2030.
An elite gymnast before he transitioning to aerial skiing, Flanagan was excited to finally become an Olympian and is pleased with his decision to switch sports.
It’s a dream come true. I’ve dreamt about being an Olympian for my whole life,
“I’ve no regrets changing over from the gymnastics to aerials now. No, none at all and I’m looking forward to shoot for my next Games.”
As part of the Olympic Winter Institute of Australia program, Flanagan trains at the Geoff Henke Winter Olympic Training Centre in Brisbane and is keen to get back to the water jump facility there so he can continue to push up his degree of difficulty.
“So, we’ll have a little break after the Olympics, and then we’ll get back into bit of strength and conditioning at home, and then straight back into the water ramping.
After this is all done and dusted, I’ll be very, very ready to go back to work and push the DD (degree of difficulty) to get better every day.
Flanagan put down two solid jumps in qualifying, a triple twisting double back and a double twisting double back scoring 74.02 and 87.57 respectively, finishing 20th overall.
The final event on the aerials program is the Mixed Team event.
Team officials announced yesterday that Flanagan will be joined by fellow Snow Australia athletes Abbey Willcox and Olympic silver medallist Danielle Scott to take on the world’s best in this event.
It will be the first time that Australia has had a team in the Mixed Aerials event and will again add to Flanagan’s experience at these Games.
“Well, we don’t have quite the same difficulty across the board as the other teams,” said Flanagan. “But look, anything can happen in the team events, so we just need to put down the best jumps we can and just be as clean as possible and land our jumps.”
